2023 really has been the year of pushing boundaries
this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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Corporate greed is destroying any illusions of a "middle class", that's for sure. It's just all us poor folks and a few rich assholes at this point.
Cloud-serfdom
Never existed to begin with
All the mental gymnastics they do just to avoid outright increaseing prices....
Legally i dont think they could get away with charging more without explicit permission from the account holder. As a business move when they want to generally increase prices, this is basically the only correct move.
That's how it should work, but many services have been increasing pricing with email warnings for the last decade.
My friend has PS+ and it has multiplied in price for 3-month intervals without him ever confirming the new price. He's had it for a decade without touching it and genuinely wouldn't know he's being charged so much more than he agreed to if I didn't tell him.
This is in Australia which normally has better protections for consumers, but it's possible we don't in this case as it's happened to me with every subscription I've ever had they send a n email and then start charging an amount I never agreed to.
The only exception was AEW+ via Fite.tv which was in USD, that was the only time I ever lost my sub when the price changed, which given it went up +40% I was glad they handled it respectfully.
Yeah this is the key. Price hikes require notification and time for the user to opt out or cancel. Removing features suffers from minimal legal regulation.
Ways to make profit: charge more or give the customer less 🫠
My Disney price went up and I didn't get the email warning. No message or warning in app. After having their support tell me "too bad" I just cancelled it and Hulu.
I got an email from disney+ saying my yearly plan is going from $119 CAD to $149.99 CAD on Dec 7th
My actual plan expires near the end of 2024 due to a promo I have right now which paused my yearly plan that I already paid for.
We wanted to let you know that effective November 1, 2023, your plan will be called Disney+ Premium and will increase in price from your current price of $119.99 to $149.99 per year. The price adjustment will take effect on 07 December 2023. Your payment method on file will be charged unless you cancel your subscription before then.
The above makes it sound like they're going to charge me the difference if I don't cancel, and not honor their yearly price I already paid.
There is a bug in Disney's system, I bought the promo where you got a year for about 10 months of payments when they released in my country. They have now failed to re-charge my card for the second year in a row and i still got access. 😊
This why you should sail the seas
Yup. They delayed it a few months so their dumbass "MaX" rebrand wouldn't catch the flack.
I have Max included with my home internet plan. I use it so little that if I was paying $16/month for it, I could probably drop it and just buy Blu-Rays for any movies or shows that I would watch on there and still be ahead at the end of the year. Plus then I'd have media to keep for when they inevitably delist it on the streaming catalog to save syndication fees.
I've got a feeling that we're gonna get to the point where streaming services only allow you to watch your shows on a single device, must have a certain ISP and that ISP needed changes hourly, prices will be $100+ but you get 5 seconds of show per 50 ads, Mercury must be in retrograde, and you must provide proof you are watching every single second and if you blink, your account is banished to the ad realm. Just for the sake of profit
Drink a verification can
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Max subscribers who were grandfathered into the streaming company's cheapest ad-free plan are about to see their service get worse.
To get 4K, HDR10, and Dolby Vision streams, subscribers have to move up to Max's Ultimate plan, which starts at $19.99/month.
Discovery warned people that the legacy plan would eventually go away when it merged Discovery+ and HBO Max in May.
The move could entice subscribers to pay the extra $4 for 4K and HDR streams.
Max has been better about offering 4K content than HBO had been in the past, though, subscribers may want to peruse the streaming service's 4K library before deciding to pay more.
Subscribers could also opt to move to Max's cheaper (starts at $9.99 per month) ad tier.
The original article contains 339 words, the summary contains 123 words. Saved 64%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is confusing, my plan auto renewed for a year in September, what happens to people like me? It didn't even give me the option to "upgrade", it just did it.
Yep. My sub expired recently and I didn't renew. Inflated bs. Now I'll just cycle streaming services. So dumb. Doing the same with Disney and their awful pricing.
Damn even Canadian cellular networks don't do that